Vapor Trails

Vapor Trails                            

 

     The world died.

     It was alive once, before the Vapor trails that arced high overhead. Before the brilliant white flashes that blinded all unlucky enough to look. There were tall, living, leafy things that dotted the land, and where they congregated en masse canopies of emerald formed for miles across. Lush grasses decorated now barren hillsides and Plains, mirror lakes shining clear and bright. It is whispered that in these times things lived and swam in the waters. The largest of these creatures dwelt within the depths of the lethal oceans, those great bodies of water we shun that are death merely to look upon.

     They made the sky sick first. Then the people. After the flashes gales of poison rain, burning to the touch came down. Those who were lucky passed in the instant fires of the beginning. Those who lingered and linger still, suffered.

The green things of the world perished into bracken sludge as heat for sources unseen corrupted them. This invisible force inhabited the land for many years, strongest where the Vapor trails had touched down. It spread far and fast in the early days, as fast as the winds could carry its presence. We've learned to avoid its power now, but before by the time the people felt the burning in their eyes and the itching in their skin it was too late.

     We shun too, the great skeletons.  They lie twisted and broken in mass graves, steely and glinting in the waning light of the ochre sun. They are remnants, I heard tell once. Before their hard skins stretched tight around, transparent in places. Within them dwelt and worked our predecessors until the end. So many they were and so few are we, but we yet live, and they have not even their own skeletons to show for their years alive. We avoid these places not because of the invisible poison, though often it does dwell there. We let them rest because they are the monuments of a people that lead to the world's death. A time of plenty, yet selfishness. A time of great power, yet petulance. Of capability yet ignorance.

     We are few now, and I am old. I have seen twenty winters in the new world, and to some I am considered ancient. The cycle of birth and life is all that sustains our people now, and those who last carry the great burden of history. Or more precisely, it's knowledge. I am one of those chosen to pass on what has happened, to attempt to avoid it's passing again. The halls and houses of men may yet grow large and strong again, and we must prepare them. Prepare those future peoples with the knowledge we have gathered together. That above all else, when they discover it again, to fear and repulse the discovery of the Vapor trails. Of the invisible poisons and the flashes. Never again to birth a thousand suns upon the earth's surface.

If we can survive until then.

     But we are few now and I am old. The sickness will come to me soon like it does all of us, the curse for lingering on and succumbing not to thirst nor hunger, though such a thing is rare. Something will grow inside me and cease my functions, a consuming mass brought about by the poisons of the world. But such truths are no matter. I have passed on my knowledge and warnings of the time before,  and now you will keep them. Share them with others. I am merely content now to watch our few crops grow in the struggling soil.

     I will return to that dirt in the days ahead. Perhaps with one blink of the moon or many, we keep little other record of time here. My body will be ensconced within the harsh grains of the sick ground. And slowly but surely make it well again so that things may grow there. So that others may live to share the knowledge of the Vapor Trails.

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[Delmar Cooper]

This story should come equipped with an appellation: “Note to Self, make this synopsis a novel as soon as time permits.”

As written it is a collection of great ideas that need to be written into story form. Did you ever see the ancient B movie “Day of the Triffids”? Some elements of this remind me of that movie.